In CBS Test, Mobile Ads Find Users

From The New York Times - Pssst, hey you! There’s a cheap latte waiting at the coffee shop on the corner!

CBS plans to announce on Wednesday that it is trying one of the first serious experiments with cellphone advertising that is customized for a person’s location. Its CBS Mobile unit is teaming up with the social networking service Loopt, which allows its subscribers to track participating friends and family on their mobile phones.

The ads will appear on two Web sites that are tailored for mobile devices, CBS Mobile News and CBS Mobile Sports. | Read full article

Mobile Web: So Close Yet So Far

From The New York Times - ON the surface, the mobile Web is a happening place. There’s the iPhone in all its glory. More than 30 companies have signed up for the Open Handset Alliance from Google, which aims to bring the wide-open development environment of the Internet to mobile devices. Nokia, which owns nearly 40 percent of the world market for cellphones, is snapping up Web technology companies and has made an eye-popping $8.1 billion bid for Navteq, a digital mapping service. There are also the requisite start-ups chasing the market.

It all looks good, but the wireless communications business smacks of a soap opera, with disaster lurking like your next dropped call.

In 2000, the wireless application protocol was supposed to bring the Internet to the cellphone. Our hero turned out to be a flash in the pan. That was attributed to a lack of high-speed cellular data networks, so a frenzied and costly effort to build third-generation, or 3G, networks ensued. But at a recent conference, 3G was called “a failure” by Caroline Gabriel, an analyst at Rethink Research. She said data would make up only 12 percent of average revenue per user in 2007, far below the expected 50 percent. (The 12 percent figure does not include text messaging, but you don’t need a 3G network to send a text message.) | Read full article

Tim Berners-Lee Warns of ‘Walled Gardens’ for Mobile Internet

From The New York Times - There may be all kinds of technology issues, business plan problems and potential failures to address before the mobile Internet becomes a success. But for Tim Berners-Lee there's really only one issue.

On the opening day of Mobile Internet World in Boston, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web told a packed hall that the mobile Internet needs to be fully and completely the Internet, nothing more and nothing less. It needs to be free of central control, universal, and embodied in open standards.

"The Web is an open platform on which you build other things," he said. "That's how you get this innovation. The Web is universal: you can run it on any hardware, on any operating system, it can be used by people of different languages...It's a sandbox where people can [play and] exercise their creativity. It's very important to keep the Web universal as we merge the Internet with mobile." | Read full story

Google to unveil 'Android' phone software

From CNET - Google is ready to unveil a suite of software for mobile phones based on open-source technology, backed by some of the largest wireless industry companies in the world.

The company is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to unveil the project, which is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world into a mobile platform code-named Android that's designed to run on phones, according to sources familiar with Google's plans. A software development kit for what's being called "a complete mobile-phone software stack" is believed to be in the works and will be released relatively soon thereafter, the sources said. It's not exactly clear what kind of software will come as part of that stack, but it's said to include everything you need to run a phone. | Read full article

Google, Mozilla and the Open-Source Phone

From The New York Times - There is a lot we don’t know about Google’s cellphone effort, but this much seems clear from the many reports: Google isn’t making a phone, it is developing an open-source cellphone operating system. Google will, no doubt build some proprietary applications that run on it, find manufacturers and cut deals with carriers to deliver a shiny package to consumers.

Another interesting fact: Mike Schroepfer, the vice president for engineering of the Mozilla Foundation, announced that the group is working on a mobile version of its open-source Firefox browser. | Read full article

GPhone Buzz Hits Frenzy After Google's Jaiku Deal

From Online Media Daily - GOOGLE'S LATEST ACQUISITION PUTS IT deeper into SMS territory. The search giant announced that it acquired Helsinki-based Jaiku, a company that lets users keep track of their friends' activities via short SMS and Web messages.

Like Twitter, the service is accessible via mobile phone and posts the instant messages to a central Web site. Users can also choose to send messages to other Web sites, blogs and mobile phones, or connect with established instant messaging services like AOL's AIM and Yahoo Instant Messenger, among others. | Read full article

Mobile TV among highlights at Berlin consumer electronics show

From CBC.ca - Mobile TV and 3-D TV are among the consumer products being pushed at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin.

The show, which runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5, bills itself as one of the largest such shows in the world. This year, it included 1,212 exhibiters from 32 countries. | Read full article

Google Pushes Tailored Phones To Win Lucrative Ad Market

From The Wall Street Journal - Google Inc. is searching for growth in cellphones.

The company, which has made billions of dollars in Web advertising on computers, is courting wireless operators to carry handsets customized to Google products, including its search engine, email and a new mobile Web browser, say people familiar with the plans. It wants to capture a big chunk of the fast-growing market for ads on cellphones.

Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the cellphone project, say people who have been briefed on it. It has developed prototype handsets, made overtures to operators such as T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, and talked over technical specifications with phone manufacturers. It hopes multiple manufacturers will make devices based on its specs and multiple carriers will offer them.

For wireless operators, the plans are a double-edged sword. Google's powerful brand and its popular Web services could help operators sign up more subscribers to data packages, on which they increasingly rely as voice revenue declines. However, operators have been wary about losing control over the mobile-ad market. | Read full article

Sprint, Google Vow To Make WiMAX Widespread By 2008

From Online Media Daily - SPRINT HAS PARTNERED WITH GOOGLE to create a WiMAX portal that will house Web-based applications, social networking and search--creating an opportunity for marketers to reach consumers with a digital message wherever they are, and on any available device.

In the as-yet unnamed portal, Sprint's high-speed wireless service (which includes location detection) will be combined with Google Apps (including e-mail, chat and calendaring), allowing consumers to browse the Web, buy products on-demand, and stream media on devices ranging from laptops and PDAs to phones and music players.

"This is a play to get Internet access in a very broadband way through a number of different devices," said Peter Cannistra, director of Sprint's mobile broadband business. "WiMAX is being built out for laptops and fixed computers, but we're working to put the chips into wide array of consumer electronics." | Read full article

EU Backs Nokia-Led Mobile TV Standard

From The New York Times - The European Commission backed a Nokia-led mobile television broadcasting standard on Wednesday in a move that could spur growth in the fledgling but potentially lucrative sector.

The lack of a single technology has held back wider take-up for television on cell phones and the EU's support for digital video broadcast handheld (DVB-H) could be the decisive factor in the battle to establish a global standard.

The Commission said on its Web site that DVB-H "appears to be the strongest contender for future mobile TV deployment in Europe" and is already the most popular standard in Europe.

"The Commission therefore considers that DVB-H will form the basis for successful introduction and take-up of terrestrial mobile TV services in the EU," it said. | Read full article

Intel aims to speed Linux gadget development

From The New York Times - The iPhone doesn't run Linux, but Intel has begun work to help improve the operating system for future devices of its ilk.

The chipmaker on Monday is launching its Mobile and Internet Linux Project Web site, which consolidates a number of new and existing Intel projects to improve the Linux kernel and other open-source components. In addition, the company employs "quite a bit more than a dozen" programmers for coding work, said Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open-source technologist. | Read full article

Reaching More Customers With a Simple Text Message

From The New York Times - ... Mr. Wolfe said the campaign is helping sales, although he declined to say how much. In future versions of the texting campaign, he said, the company would take a page from past marketing initiatives and include coupon codes for those who reply. The logic of that approach, he said, may be lost on more mainstream e-commerce executives.

“We sent out a mailer once that said text us back for a coupon code to get a free Moosejaw T-shirt with any order,” Mr. Wolfe said. “A real Internet business person would say it’s a mistake to do that, because the customer has to receive the e-mail, get on the phone and text us, then wait for the reply to get the code, then go back to the computer to put in their order.

“We could’ve just sent out a coupon code in an e-mail,” Mr. Wolfe continued. “But texting is cool enough that we were willing to risk some friction, knowing the upside was that people would talk about it in their dorm rooms.” | Read full article